I will now give my own figures for these tragedies, as they differ somewhat from Koenig’s, probably because my method differs. (1) I have included speeches rhymed or ending with rhymes, mainly because I find that Shakespeare will sometimes (in later plays) end a speech which is partly rhymed with an incomplete line (e.g.  Ham. III. ii. 187, and the last words of the play:  or Macb. V. i. 87, V. ii. 31).  And if such speeches are reckoned, as they surely must be (for they may be, and are, highly significant), those speeches which end with complete rhymed lines must also be reckoned. (2) I have counted any speech exceeding a line in length, however little the excess may be; e.g.

I’ll fight till from my bones my flesh be hacked. 
Give me my armour: 

considering that the incomplete line here may be just as significant as an incomplete line ending a longer speech.  If a speech begins within a line and ends brokenly, of course I have not counted it when it is equivalent to a five-foot line; e.g.

Wife, children, servants, all
That could be found: 

but I do count such a speech (they are very rare) as

My lord, I do not know: 
But truly I do fear it: 

for the same reason that I count

You know not
Whether it was his wisdom or his fear.

Of the speeches thus counted, those which end somewhere within the line I find to be in Othello about 54 per cent.; in Hamlet about 57; in King Lear about 69; in Macbeth about 75.[285] The order is the same as Koenig’s, but the figures differ a good deal.  I presume in the last three cases this comes from the difference in method; but I think Koenig’s figures for Othello cannot be right, for I have tried several methods and find that the result is in no case far from the result of my own, and I am almost inclined to conjecture that Koenig’s 41.4 is really the percentage of speeches ending with the close of a line, which would give 58.6 for the percentage of the broken-ended speeches.[286]

We shall find that other tests also would put Othello before Hamlet, though close to it.  This may be due to ’accident’—­i.e. a cause or causes unknown to us; but I have sometimes wondered whether the last revision of Hamlet may not have succeeded the composition of Othello.  In this connection the following fact may be worth notice.  It is well known that the differences of the Second Quarto of Hamlet from the First are much greater in the last three Acts than in the first two—­so much so that the editors of the Cambridge Shakespeare suggested that Q1 represents an old play, of which Shakespeare’s rehandling had not then proceeded much beyond the Second Act, while Q2 represents his later completed rehandling.  If that were so, the composition of the last three Acts would be a good deal later than that of the first two (though of course the first two would be revised at the time of the composition of the last three).  Now I find that the percentage of speeches ending with a broken line is about 50 for the first two Acts, but about 62 for the last three.  It is lowest in the first Act, and in the first two scenes of it is less than 32.  The percentage for the last two Acts is about 65.